Water

It is a bizarre scene: on a bullock cart is transports a dying man, his side are some men and women in the car who care lovingly for the half-dead. As a little girl (Sarala the husband) out of boredom on the fun little ride on his feet tickled, they will receive a resounding slap. It’s the year 1938 in India, the little girl’s name is Chuyia, she is eight years old and the wife of the dying. After the death of her husband, expecting the child a terrible fate. You will spend the rest of her life in an ashram for widows in repentance, because – as it is to the faith – it takes as wife a big blame for the untimely death of her husband.

Life in the ashram on the banks of the Ganges is incredibly hard and privations: 14 women live together here, to beg for one meal a day, speak only when they are contacted and pray the rest of the time. The heads of all women are shaved, gets to keep, with one exception – the beautiful widow Kalyani (Lisa Ray), her hair, but only because it is the cruel head of Madhumati (Manorma) forced to prostitute themselves. Kalyani bear like all women in the ashram with her fate stoically, such as the quiet and introspective Shakuntala (Seema Biswas), which takes care of moving around the young girl. The small Chuyia but is still too untamed to subordinate themselves to the rigid regime Madhumatis unconditionally, especially as it perseveres in the firm belief that her mother would soon liberate them from their shameful existence. As Kalyanis little puppy at the bath in the river the girl escapes and tries to capture the fugitive again, she unexpectedly meets the lawyer Narayan (John Abraham) – an encounter that changed not only their lives but also the Kalyanis. ( #) Deepa Mehta with Water completes its initiated in 1998 with Fire and Earth with one years later, continuing the cycle of the elements, but already the filming of violent hostility was accompanied by reactionary and ultra-conservative circles in India, in 2000, even the Set devastated, so that the filming had to be eventually put in Sri Lanka. The controlled protests even went so far that each day Mehta’s portrait was publicly burned, so it is really a miracle that the movie could even be finished shot. The violent reactions by militant Hindus are hardly understandable, considering that her film director living in Canada in 1938 has settled. But even today find themselves exposed to widows in India many severe discrimination – facts to which closed after India’s rapidly changing society like before his eyes. And so it is now almost the known evils and to accept that even the theatrical release of Water in the West of warnings of radical Hindu groups will be accompanied, who fear that distorts the religious and social image of India in other cultures could be exercised.

In fact, Deepa Mehta’s film contains a lot of social upheaval in itself. Historically accurate and deliberately staged and conventionally told, it lets the enormity and the fates of their protagonists serious amount of space. Only occasionally Mehta lapses while in the shallow waters of Bollywood, if for example, natural events such as a sunrise near the border with (at least to Western eyes perceived as kitsch) is directing. But she sees it again and again sent to find the balance between aesthetic images and vivid descriptions of social reality in India so that the film will hopefully get the bottom line is both applauded inveterate Bollywood fans and the program klassischenr movie. One worth seeing trip in the history of India, the film is forever.

(Joachim Kurz)

Title: Water Country of production: Canada Year of production: 2005 Length: 118 (Min) of material: (# ) Universum Film

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on Saturday, October 17th, 2009.
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